Have Christians Lost the Moral High Ground on Immigration?

Photo by Tim Butterfield

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger[1] and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”[2]

The parable of the sheep and goats and the explanation of it given by Jesus is relevant to the issue of immigration. This is not in the Old Testament, but the New Testament. This isn’t God talking to the nation of Israel (as if what God said to the nation of Israel has no bearing on us), but God talking to all of us through Jesus.

The bottom is this: we will be judged by how we treat people.

A case can be made that God’s instructions to the Israelites on the treatment of strangers (aliens, foreigners, immigrants) doesn’t apply to us today,[3] like ceremonial and dietary laws don’t apply to us today as followers of Christ. At least, that is the position taken by James K. Hoffmeier in the article, The Use and Abuse of the Bible in the Immigration Debate, December 2011.[4]

Hoffmeier argues that conservative Christians should not take a position in favor of immigration. He says that only secularists and liberals hold to that position, and they misquote the Bible in support thereof.

Before diving in to the issue, we should note that the discussion isn’t about whether immigration should be allowed, or not. We already allow immigration and always have. Few people are arguing that we should open the borders wide with no controls at all, and few people are arguing that we should shut the borders tight and not allow any immigration at all.

The issue is the extent of the immigration we should allow and the terms and conditions that we should attach to it. But, the debate sounds as if people are lining up completely in favor of open borders or completely closing them off. This isn’t the case, of course.

Another issue we need to contend with is the notion that the secularists and liberals have staked out the ground in favor of immigration. This notion is also false. Who is against immigration?! Who would refuse any immigration at all?!

But, what if those “secularists and liberals” are “right” in their policies that favor more immigration? Do we oppose things just because secularists or liberals ascribe to it? These are questions I ask myself as I consider the issues. Are we just reacting? I believe we should be guided, not by our opposition to positions taken by unbelievers, but by our own reading of the Scriptures and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

I am neither a secularist nor a liberal. I believe the Bible is the Word of God, and I believe that we are responsible to God whose Word is preserved in the Bible. My reading of the Bible leads me to take the position that that we, in America, have a responsibility to welcome the strangers, the immigrants, into our land because that is the heart of God.

Professor Hoffmeier takes a different view. He points out that nations had sovereignty laws in the millennia before Christ and cites examples in the Old Testament, like the Edomites refusing to give Israel passage through the land of Edom.[5] That the Edomites controlled their borders and refused Israel passage, however, doesn’t mean God sanctioned their actions.

The Bible often chronicles events that happened without much overt commentary. We have to ask ourselves, “What did God think about it?”

The passage doesn’t offer any direct clues. It simply says that the Edomites met the wandering Israelites “with a large army and with a strong force” … “so Israel turned away….”[6] But there are indirect clues in other areas of the Bible.

(c) Can Stock Photo

The Edomites, by the way, descended from Esau. They were kin of the Israelites. Despite their shared ancestry, they were perpetually in conflict with the Israelites, and they incurred the wrath of God for the way they treated the Israelites.[7] Among the pronouncements of judgment on Edom is this statement that sounds much like the words Jesus spoke many, many years later (quoted above):

As you have done, it shall be done to you;
your deeds shall return on your own head.[8]

Hoffmeier builds a case on the fact that nations protected their territories in the Old Testament, but that fact doesn’t really tell us anything about how God viewed those practices. The article cites to passages about Egypt and Edom, in particular, protecting and guarding their borders,[9] but Egypt and Edom are hardly examples of nations who had the blessing of God. God eventually allowed the Edomites to be wiped out because of their evil ways. God imposed plagues on the Egyptians for enslaving the Israelites and refusing to let them go back to the land God had given them.

Even if we ignore for the moment that these nations who practiced border control incurred God’s wrath, should God’s people pattern themselves after wicked nations as a general proposition (just because their practices are “in the Bible”)?

The answer is lies in the instructions God gave His people. The land that God gave the Israelites came with specific instructions about caring for orphans and widows and welcoming strangers.[10] In the land God gave His people, He instructed them very specifically about welcoming and looking after the immigrants. They were not to be like the other, wicked nations around them. God was also explicit about the reasons why:

“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”[11]

“You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”[12]

“When a stranger sojourns[13] with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”[14]

In the same passage in Leviticus where the Israelites are instructed to love the strangers who sojourn among them, the Israelites were instructed more globally to “love your neighbor as yourself”.[15] Sound familiar?

But, you might say, we have laws, and people are disobeying those laws. If the Israelites had passed laws like the other nations to keep the strangers out, would they have been wrong to enforce them? Would they be justified in not honoring God’s instructions to them about the sojourners in their midst?

By now, a perceptive reader might notice that these questions are rhetorical. Israel was to be an example of God’s law to the nations around them.[16] God’s law included a command to welcome, protect and care for strangers, orphans and widows. The nation of Israel was to be a shining example for the people around them, just as we (followers of Christ) are to be a shining example of Christ, a City set on a hill for all to see.

God’s instruction to His people was clear, and His reaction to their failure to follow His instruction is equally clear. Long before Jesus told the parable of the sheep and the goats, God provided this explanation for exiling His people from the land He gave them, and it has to do with how they treated the strangers in their midst, among other things:

And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppressthe widow, the fatherless, the sojourner[17], or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.” But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear.They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord of hosts. “As I called, and they would not hear, so they called, and I would not hear,” says the Lord of hosts, “and I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known….[18]

The Israelites were scattered because they refused to do as God commanded, and among those express commands was a command not to oppress the sojourners. They refused to listen, and they suffered the consequences of God’s wrath because of it.

While Hoffmeier tries to build a case based on the practice of evil nations that protected their borders, the Bible doesn’t contain any statements (I could find) approving those practices. Bojidar Marinov[19] observes in an article published in rebuttal to Hoffmeier’s article that “the Bible doesn’t mention any laws for restricting immigration”.[20] The only pronouncements from God are about welcoming and harboring immigrants!

Marinov argues that the current immigration laws in the US were advocated by politicians who opposed Christianity, and conservative Christians 30 years ago held the opposite view on immigration as many do today. Somehow we have allowed the roles to be reversed on us, and we have ceded the high ground to the secularists and the liberals. While our “enemies” quote the Bible at us, we stretch to justify our position in opposition to them. In the process, Marinov says:

“[We] ignore the ethics of the Bible in favor of the linguistics of the Bible, using the linguistics to prove things contrary to the ethics. In short, [we] swallow the camel and strain out the gnat.”

Hoffmeier rests on the fact that most of the verses that command the Israelites to welcome and incorporate strangers into the fabric of the community use the word “Gēr“, which means a temporary dweller, a resident alien, a protected foreigner. Hoffmeier equates the Hebrew word, Ger, with legal aliens, and the other Hebrew words that are also translated stranger, foreigner or sojourner (Nekhar andZar))[21], he equates with illegal aliens.

Hoffmeier says that the laws keeping immigrants out should be honored. I think we would all generally agree that laws should be honored, but what if the laws are unjust? What if those laws don’t honor God or His instructions to us?

In a Democracy, we the people have some responsibility for the laws that are in place through the people we have elected. If those laws are unjust, we have some responsibility to change them.

The Bible is also full of examples of instances in which men’s laws must be ignored in favor of God’s laws. One such example is when the disciples kept preaching the Gospel when they were ordered to stop!

As for the issue at hand, God was so protective about the treatment of strangers in Israel, that He even commanded the Israelites to protect slaves who escaped their masters (and not return them to the maters).[22] In all the various and very specific commands of God to the Israelites, there is not a word on prohibiting strangers (Ger, Nekhar; or Zar) from sojourning in the land.

In short, “[t]he very concept of immigration control is missing; it’s nowhere to be seen” in the Bible, says Marinov. Hoffmeier assumes, without any biblical basis, that Ger means legal and Nekhar and Zar mean illegal, but that distinction isn’t evident anywhere in the various passages. Those terms are not defined that way in Scripture. In fact, if we dig a little bit deeper, we find examples of words other than Ger used in a similar way as Ger.

The word, nokhri, of the same root as nekhar, is used in 1 Kings 8:41-43 when Solomon prays for the foreigners to be welcomed in the Temple. The same word, nokhri, is used by Ruth to describe her self.[23] Ruth is the poster child of an immigrant who was welcomed and treated as an Israelite would be treated.

In a twist of sorts, the word, Zar, is used in Numbers 16:40 to describe an Israelite who is not a descendant of Aaron. In Deuteronomy 15:1-3, different laws were applied to foreigners (Zar) living among the Israelites and, in Deuteronomy 17:15, foreigners (Zar) were not to be put in positions of power over the Israelites. These distinctions applied to the category of sojourners Hoffmeier asserts should be equated with legal immigrants today.

In no place, however, were any sojourners ordered to be expelled or kept out because of the fact that there were temporary residents. In fact, all of these statements necessarily imply that they were living among the Israelites!

In Deuteronomy 14:21, we also see both the alien (Gēr) and the foreigner (Zar) having different laws applied to them compared to the Israelites. Both groups were distinguished from from the Israelites, and both groups were were treated in the same way. The distinction was between them and the Israelites, notbetweenthe two.

The terms do have different connotations, as Marinov discusses, but the difference between legal and illegal is not among the different connotations. All three words are used of strangers living in and among the Israelites, and the Israelites were commended to welcome them, without distinction, and provide for them.

These clear instructions to the Israelites stand in contrast to the practices of the neighboring, wicked nations around them! The Israelites were specifically ordered to treat strangers differently than the way neighboring nations treated them!

It’s no wonder that Jesus carried that theme forward in the parable of the sheep and the goats, and in His admonition to love your neighbor as yourself and in other similar ways. The larger theme than the gnats we want to strain out is the second greatest commandment! That theme is loving our neighbors, including the immigrants. Refusing to take them in and to give them safe harbor is not loving them.

The Christians who are citizens of this country who elect representatives who pass the laws of this country are accountable to God for those laws in a free society in which we get to participate – at least as far as it is up to us.

Frankly, given the rather recent history of conservative support for immigration reform (think of Reagan and Bush), we have abdicated the moral high ground on this issue, the commandment of God, to the secularists and liberals! They are shoving it in our faces, and so they should. Perhaps, we have been more concerned about opposing them than aligning ourselves with God’s heart and His Word.

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[1]ξένος (xenos) – meaning a stranger. We get the word xenophobia from this Greek word.

[11] Exodus 22:21 (“Stranger” is translated from Gēr – a temporary dweller as a resident alien (“protected foreigner”) – like a sojourner without inheritance rights; to sojourn in a place, or through a lifetime (mēm-locale)).

[13]Gûr – dwell as a newcomer, like a pilgrim migrating to a new land; a temporary or permanent resident with “no original or inherited rights” (BDB) – yet having more belonging and acceptance than toshab (a “sojourner”); immigrant, stranger, “alien.” Gûr relates finding a permanent place to live, especially after being a wanderer or nomadic.

[19] A Reformed missionary to his native Bulgaria for over 10 years, Bojidar preaches and teaches doctrines of the Reformation and a comprehensive Biblical worldview. Having founded Bulgarian Reformation Ministries in 2001, he and his team have translated over 30,000 pages of Christian literature about the application of the Law of God in every area of man’s life and society, and published those translations online for free. He has been active in the formation of the Libertarian movement in Bulgaria, a co-founder of the Bulgarian Society for Individual Liberty and its first chairman.

[22] Deuteronomy 23:15-16 (“You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.”)